"Piker"

[Mark A. Mandel]

Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM> observes:
    >>>>>

For what it's worth, the OED's current treatment, soon to be
published, has the English 'tramp' sense from the 1830s; puts
the 'poor resident of Pike Co. Missouri' sense (for which we
have 1859 evidence) as an etymologically distinct item, and
derives the 'small-timer' sense (first attested in Matsell)
from the verb _pike_ 'to gamble small amounts' (from the
same period).
 <<<<<

Could the English 'tramp' sense derive from "pike" as a short form of 
"turnpike" for a toll road?: 'someone who spends his time on the road'. OED 
Online has this definition with an English* 1812 citation:

 2. a. A turnpike road, ‘turnpike’, highway. [...]

1812 M. EDGEWORTH Absentee in Tales Fashionable Life VI. xvi. 377 Keep the 
pike till you come to the turn at Rotherford, and then you strike off into 
the by-road to the left. 

* OED Online bibliography link, "Edgeworth, Maria"; 
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~jmac/MEdgeworth.htm

	----

By the way, the hits are sorted in alphabetical order, not numeric (these 
numbers are all superscript on the web site): 

1  	 pic2, pike   	*  	
2 	Pike, n.10 	* 	
3 	pike, n.11 	* 	
4 	pike, n.1 	* 	
5 	pike, n.2 	* 	
6 	pike, n.3 	* 	
7 	pike, n.4 	* 	
8 	pike, n.5 	* 	
9 	pike, n.6 	* 	
10 	pike, a. 	*

-- Mark
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]